By Kylie MacLellan
LONDON (Reuters) – Family doctors in the state-funded National Health Service (NHS) in England will begin industrial action on Thursday after voting overwhelmingly in favour of doing so in a dispute over funding and contract changes.
The British Medical Association (BMA) trade union said more than 8,500 General Practitioners (GPs) had taken part in the ballot with 98.3% voting in favour of collective action, which would begin immediately.
This would see doctors stopping work they are not formally contracted to do as well as action such as pulling out of patient data sharing agreements. The NHS said it could include GPs limiting the number of patient appointments per day.
The BMA said Thursday’s vote marked the first time GPs had taken part in their own industrial action in 60 years. GPs took part in industrial action organised by a wider group of doctors in 2012.
“GPs are at the end of their tether. This is an act of desperation. For too long, we’ve been unable to provide the care we want to. We are witnessing general practice being broken,” Katie Bramall-Stainer, chair of BMA’s GP committee for England, said.
“The era of the family doctor has been wiped out by recent consecutive governments and our patients are suffering.”
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the decision was “disappointing”.
CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT
The ballot for action opened before a July election at which the Conservative Party lost power after 14 years.
The new Labour government said on Thursday it would give doctors’ surgeries greater freedom over hiring additional staff in order to recruit more than 1,000 newly-qualified GPs this year, a change the profession had been calling for.
Health minister Wes Streeting said an extra 82 million pounds ($105 million) to hire those GPs would be paid for by redistributing funds within his department.
“I can understand why GPs wanted to punish the previous government. But taking collective action will only punish patients,” he wrote in the Telegraph newspaper ahead of the ballot result being announced.
“I want to reset the relationship between GPs and their government.”
Earlier this week the government accepted the recommendation of an independent body to increase GP pay by 6%, but the BMA said at the time this did not go far enough.
The BMA said it understood Labour had “inherited a broken NHS” and it had had some positive conversations with Streeting but felt it had no choice but to move ahead with action.
“This will not be a ‘big bang’. It will be a slow burn. It’s likely that impact may not be felt for some time. We hope this will give the new government time to consider our proposed solutions including fixing our contract once and for all,” Bramall-Stainer said.
(This story has been corrected to remove the reference to ‘first strike in 60 years,’ and to clarify landmark, in paragraphs 1 and 4 respectively)
(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; editing by William James and Ros Russell)
